Today, many computers and the like include both a hard disc drive (“HDD”) and a digital video disc (“DVD”) drive or provide the option of plugging in or adding one or more HDD or DVD drives. Existing computers and the like use separate controllers and programs to separately control a DVD and an HDD. Each control mechanism has an associated cost. Therefore, it is desirable to provide a single control mechanism that is capable of controlling both a DVD and an HDD, as well as other devices.
Existing attempts to control both an HDD and a DVD with a single control mechanism have failed to overcome problems associated with the reception of so-called servo control signals and their associated data. By way of background, it is known that an HDD servo control signal indicates a present position of a magnetic head or the like used to, for example, read and write information from an HDD. Similarly, a DVD servo control signal indicates a present location of a laser (e.g., laser diode or LED) used to read/write information from a DVD. Presently, each of these control signals is sent to a separate controller which, upon reception of the control signals, determines a next position for the magnetic head or laser. Unfortunately, both signals may be sent at the same time or in such close proximity to one another that it is practically impossible to detect a first control signal (e.g., an HDD signal), followed by its associated data/content and then process the control signal and the data/content before the arrival of a second control signal (e.g., a DVD signal) and its associated data/content. A controller must either suspend processing of the first servo control signal and its associated data in order to receive the second servo control signal and its associated data or choose to ignore the second control signal and its associated data until it has finished processing the first servo control signal and its associated data. In the former case, a delay in the processing of the first servo control signal and its associated data makes it practically impossible to provide real-time adjustments to an associated device, a situation which is unacceptable. In the latter case, the failure to detect the second servo control signal and its associated data makes it practically impossible to adjust the second device at all.
It is therefore also desirable to provide for methods and devices which are capable of processing servo control signals from, for example, both an HDD and a DVD along with associated data/content in such a manner that both devices can be controlled in real-time with no, or substantially few, errors.